Winter Weekend

Posted on November 30, 2011 by rubyophelia

I’m going to buy the Home Alone box set and put it on this weekend! I can’t wait to sit and write cards and wrap presents with some proper, Christmas humour – I love this time of year as everything gets a leeeeettle bit ridiculous, but it’s completely acceptable! So, we are on a mission to find it (somewhere HAS to have it? Surely? The supermarket?? Hmm…) Anyway, it’s happening! I’m already going through it in my head and found this picture on the left which made me laugh so much! I love that part of the film! I may even watch Home Alone 4… we’ll see…

Mince Pies

I’ve got my HomeMade Gluten Free Mincemeat ready to be used, and it should be beautiful by now after being sat in it’s little Kilner jar getting all delicious for the past month!

I’m going to make some ‘open-top’, some with pastry topping and some with crushed and toasted hazelnuts on… just for variation and because I’m ‘test-driving’ them for my hamper as I’ll be putting some into it!

Mulled Wine

The plan is to make this and the mulled cider and have it over the weekend and maybe even take a flask for a wintery walk through the park! We’ll see how adventurous we get vs. how many presents get wrapped and cards get written! Otherwise we will be drinking it while watching Home Alone… either way suits me fine! I love Mulled Wine, but I don’t like it to be too heavy, so lots of yummy spices and apple-y goodness for me please! I love this cute picture I put in… but believe me, my wine will not be being tied up with a scarf, it will be being drunk by me who will probably be wearing said scarf!

Mulled Cider

I haven’t had this in a few years – last time I had it was at one of my favourite Christmas Markets – Lincoln. The market takes over the whole of Bailgate and it’s such a beautiful and busy place to be – food stalls, craft stalls, all the shops are open late, the Cathederal is all lit up and the Castle grounds are opened up with more of the market inside… wow… I miss home now! I’ll have to take the boyfriend up their one year for the market as the Castle is beautiful and so magical at Christmas, otherwise, it’s pretty expensive to go on a day-to-day visit and is usually full of school kids (I would know, I was once one of them, running around the castle, filling in various activity sheets in all my 90′s Puffa Jacket madness… yes, I was fat and in a puffa, please do not judge me, I was obviously totally on-trend and V fashion-foreward!) So anyway, the mulled cider not only smells delicious, it tastes it too and I think i’m going to have a go at serving it as it is in this picture I’ve found as the boyfriend managed to pick up some apples he isn’t too keen on (but which I like) and they were BYGOF so I can’t eat that many apples and I thought – why not be a little cup-crazy and make apple cups! I know, i’m completely off-the-wall with my Christmas ideas… i’m not… I just like decorations and pretty things, and these looks super-easy and impressive (win-win in my books!).

Foccacia

So, here I am, really giving myself a challenge here – to make Focacia bread, but not only that, I’ve found this lovely picture and will not have to create something that resembles such a thing of beauty. If not, it will be something to laugh about… ohh why do I do this to myself? I should just find terrible, disasterous pictures, say I’m going to make something similar and then look super-impressive when mine (may/possibly/hopefully/please do) turns out looking like the real deal and not a kitchen disaster worthy of the bin! So… we shall see… most of the time I’m just really excited to make something complicated as a gluten free meal or treat, especially when bread is involved as, removing the gluten can have consequences not worth mentioning (but I will – sticky dough, dough that doesn’t rise, dough that won’t cook, dough that cooks around the edge, rock solid bread… been there, done that, worn all of the t-shirts – they didn’t look good!) so I’m always a little anxious of trying out a new recipe, but for you lovely people and for the love of gluten free baking I will attempt this beautiful bread! What kind of ‘Rubelle’s Moon’s Gluten Free Challenge’ recipe would this be if it was easy straight away?! (A good one? Yes, probably you are right!)

Roast Butternut Squash

This will be one of the recipes I first wanted to try when I began Rubelle’s Moon’s Gluten Free Challenge over a month ago. It is a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe and I think this will be a wonderful alternative to a Sunday Roast. I’m going to serve this with my Brussel Sprout recipe which I’ll be doing as a trial-run for posting up my blog for Caleigh for her run-up-to-Christmas recipes… I can’t wait to see all the treats that will be made! I love the pciture I found on the right… although to me it looks more like a Pumpkin… either way, gorgeous picture and really great colours! Love a bit of sunny orange when it starts getting a bit cold and grey outside (saying that it’s beautiful today!) and the dark nights start drawing in… I haven’t ever cooked a whole squash before, so i’m quite excited for how this will turn out!

Stuffed Crust Goats Cheese and Rocket Pizza

So, I love goats VERY much. I pretty much love all farm animals as it’s what i’ve grown up with living in the countryside! Goats are brilliant and they produce milk that can be made into CHEESE – yay! I know it’s an accquired taste, but if I like it and i’m quite fussy with cheese as I find it a bit gag-inducing and the very word ‘Fromage Frais’ is enough to send me running, so trust me on this one, this is YUM. I was inspired to make a stuffed crust as, after a trip to the supermarket, the boyfriend was hanging his nose over the ‘make-your-own-pizza’ section and saw the stuffed crust… the minute he pointed it out, I knew I had to make a gluten free alternative! So, that’s what i’ll be doing at some point this weekend! Yum! I’m quite excited for this one as I haven’t yet attempted a gluten free pizza with a stuffing in the crust, so this will be a new experiment!

Alongside all the baking and wintery winterness, I’ll be writing up my list of preparations in the countdown to Christmas (cake icing, biscuit making, hamper-putting-together-ing) and putting up some fairy lights and other decorations (no tree as we really have no tree room!) I can’t wait to have room for a ‘proper’ tree!!

Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas to add to my weekend.

Rubelle’s Moon

Gluten Free Chana Dal, Red Pepper, Red Onion and Cashew Nut Roast

Posted on November 29, 2011 by rubyophelia

I’ve been wanting to make a Nut Roast for absolutley ages, so this Sunday I did an alternative to a regular Sunday Roast with this meat free version! So delicious, completely packed with healthy ingredients and it’s vegetarian AND gluten free! This is also a great dish to make up for the week and have cold with salad, soup or vegetables.

Serves 2-4 depending on how hungry you are!

Ingredients

100g Chana Dal

225ml vegetable stock (I use Knorr stock cubes as they’re gluten free)

1 bay leaf

50g Cashew nuts – unsalted

Spray Olive Oil

2 x Chopped Red Onions

2 Small, Finely Chopped Red Peppers

75g Sliced Mushrooms

1 Finely chopped garlic clove

1 tbsp lemon juice

50g Caerphilly cheese, crumbled

50g Gluten Free Breadcrumbs (I used Mrs Crimble’s)

1 tbsp Dried, mixed herbs

1 beaten egg

The Sauce

1 tbsp Tomato Ketchup

1 tsp Smoked Paprika

400g can chopped tomatoes

100ml Vegetable stock

2 tsp Mixed Herbs

2 dashes of Tabasco

To Serve

Brocolli

Carrots

Garden Peas

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200 C

1. Cook the Chana Dal for 30 minutes, drain, rinse then put back into the pan, pour over the stock (add a little extra boiling water if needed), drop in the bayleaf, cover the pan with a lid and cook for a further 15 minutes. Once cooked, remove from the heat and set aside (this will allow the lentils to absorb the rest of the liquid if they haven’t already during cooking! If the lentils stick to the bottom of the pan, don’t worry, just add a splash more of boiling water and stir it up… If you do burn the bottom, just leave it and use what you have or, cook up some more if you’ve really gone to town on the char-grilling of the lentils!)

2. Meanwhile, roughly chop the cashew nuts and toast in a dry frying pan. Remove the nuts from the pan and place in a small bow/dish/cup/general storage container of your choice (not your mouth, do not eat these nuts! resist!!) for later.

3. Spray some oil into the pan and sautee the onions (cook over a low heat until they look slightly transluscent). Put half the onion mix into another general storage container for the sauce and add the mushrooms, peppers and garlic to the other half still in the pan. Cook for 5 minutes until the mixture has softened. Add in the lemon juice and cook for another 1 minute. Remove from the heat and set aside.

4. Take a large mixing bowl and pour in: the lentils, the pan of vegetables, the breadcrumbs, toasted cashew nuts and mixed herbs. Mix everything up, then add in the crumble cheese and egg. Mix again really thoroughly. Season well and give the whole mixture one final mix up.

5. Tip the mixture into a loaf tin and level out the top with a spatula or spoon to make sure it is really even (I got quite particular about this!) then take a piece of foil and fold it so that it sits on top of the loaf with a little up the sides of the tin. Spray the foil, place on the loaf and place the tin in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

5. During the first 30 minutes of cooking, you can prepare your sauce: add the reserved onions and all of the other sauce ingredients to a small saucepan. Simmer on a low heat for 20 minutes or so – season to taste by checking every 10 minutes to see how the flavour is developing.

6. After 30 minutes remove the foil and place back into the oven for a further 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and rest for 10 minutes.

7. Warm up the sauce and cook your vegetables while the loaf rests for 10 minutes (this helps it to hold it’s shape and for the flavours to set in.)

8. Serve up and enjoy!

Also tastes great cold, and will keep for a few days wrapped in tin foil and stored in the fridge (I just had some with salad for lunch today)

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

Gluten free dark chocolate Christmas Cake

Posted on November 7, 2011 by rubyophelia

This is part of the Christmas section of my Gluten Free Challenge so if you’re looking for the other Christmas bits and bobs, head over to the ‘Rubelle’s Moon’s Gluten Free Challenge’ and Scroll down to ‘Challenge 10- Christmas’ or click this link.

So, as I mentioned before in my pre-challenge write-up, I was going to be making Christmas Cake. Here’s what I said in that post:

“Christmas Cake -I’m going to be making my own take on the famous Delia Smith Christmas Cake… well I was going to… but I realised I really don’t like some of the ingredients in Christmas Cake (candied peel being one… blehhhh) So, i’ve conjured up my own exciting recipe which i’ll be sharing with you when I post it up! Hope you’re excited…” Here’s Delia Smith’s recipe (click this link) and then below is mine, you’ll notice that in comparison to regular fruit cakes there’s a lot less ingredients in mine, that’s because I didn’t want to make such a deep cake as, i’m making one large cake at the moment, that a week before Christmas I will cut into four smaller cakes for my hampers and ice separately, but for the brand to soak in properly and to keep all the flavours together i’m keeping the cake whole for as long as possible!

The cranberries I used were sprinkled in cinnamon and available from Sainsbury’s. You could use the same, or take a tsp of cinnamon, sprinkle it into a bag of cranberries, give it a shake and you have your own coated cranberries (I think it adds to the Christmas taste and smell!) Heres the ones I used:

And, here’s the recipe (oh, and i’ll be doing this in grams rather than cups for a change!):

Ingredients

220g Currants

100g Cranberries

85g Raisins

25g Glace Cherries, quartered

2 tbsp Brandy (you will also need some in the weeks to come to top up the cake – you do this by pouring two lids of brandy into a dish and brushing it over the top of the cake with a silicone pastry brush, don’t use those hairy ones, they’re useless and your cake will look like it’s balding/malting depending on which way you look at it… either way, no one likes a hairy cake!)

110g Gluten Free Plain Flour

1 x tsp Xanthan Gum

1/4 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Ground Nutmeg

1/2 tsp Mixed Spice

110g Unsalted butter

110g Soft, light brown sugar

2 x Large beaten eggs

25g Chopped almonds

100g Dark Chocolate, Chopped/Smashed/Broken into little pieces

2 x tsp Golden syrup

1/2 Zest of a lemon

1/2 Zest of an orange

Instructions

DAY 1. (there are two days to this cake… so make some time, it’s worth it, you’ll be so proud of yourself for making it, you’ll be glad you made the time!)

1. This is my favourite part, it’s the bit where you get to begin the Christmassy smells… Pour all of the dried fruit into a bowl or tub, add the brandy and stir it all up so that everything is all nicely mixed together and smelling delicious. Set the tub/bowl/container aside with a lid or cloth over it, in a safe place for 12 hours minimum. I did mine on Friday night and made the cake on Sunday afternoon, and the smell was aaaamazing when I opened the tub, so i’d say if you can, give it a couple of days to get really brandy-fied!

DAY 2. (don’t worry this is the only other day you’ll be making this cake, but feel free to announce in Big Brother house style or David Attenborough voice-over style… however you get through your days is up to you…!)

Before anything… Preheat the oven to 150 C, grease and line a round (or square… you crazy Christmas Cake maker you!) with greaseproof paper – important otherwise you’ll have Christmas Cake in your oven by the end of baking, not in the spring-form tin where it should be OR just use a regular non-spring form tin, this is okay to do because you are lining the tin, so it won’t need coaxing out or springing out!

1. In a large mixing bowl, sift in the flour, salt, xanthan gum and spices and then, once sifted, whisk through everything really lightly with a fork, just to be sure that there is loads of air through everything and the spices are really mixed with the flour.

2. In another large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and the sugar.

3. Slowly, tbsp by tbsp, spoon the beaten eggs (which should be really light and fluffy and have air bubbles in), into the creamed mixture. With each spon, whisk the mixture. Don’t worry if it looks like it’s going to separate, this happens, it’s totally fine. Also, if it doesn’t, great, you have the gentle cooking hands of a gentle-cook (I couldn’t think of a decent analogy there?!) but, sometimes if your kitchen is hot (mine was as I was baking all day), things can go a little differently.

4. Using a wooden spoon, carefully fold the flour and spice mixture into the egg and butter mixture, making sure everything is done soo slowly as you don’t want to upset the mixture (seriously!) and you need all the flour to be combined.

5. Finally, fold the brandy-soaked fruit, dark chocolate, nuts, golden syrup and zests into the mixture giving everything a really good mix until there is an even looking batter (even in terms of how evenly the mixture is covered in all the fruity-goodness)

6. Scoop the mixture into the prepared tin, cover the tin with tin foil and pop a 20p-sized hole in the top of it. Put the cake into the middle shelf in the oven and bake for 2 hours WITHOUT CHECKING OR OPENING THE DOOR – this is important as the cake needs to bake right through otherwise it will dip and this is not the desired look!!

7. Check on the cake after 2 hours, if it is still golden, put it back in for another 1/2 hour. If it is a deep brown colour, it’s done. Check after the 1/2 hours point and give it another 15 mins if needed.

8. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool for 1/2 hour. After this time, take a fork and make 6 light holes in the top in the 12, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 o clock positions. Then, brush with the measure of brandy (this is your first ‘feeding’ of the cake.)

9. Cover the tin with foil and leave overnight. In the morning, take your cake out of the tin, wrap in foil, then in a tea towel and place in the cupboard until the same time in 7 days when you will unwrap the cake cake ‘feed’ it once more! Continue to do this every 7 days leading up until Christmas.

I’ll post up the icing the cake instructions nearer to the time!

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

Pure Baking Excitement

Posted on October 25, 2011 by rubyophelia

Can’t contain my excitement for Sunday’s gluten free bake/cook-athon!I have a massive day of Halloween based excitement in preparation for Monday. Because Halloween decided to be a sneaky one and be on a weekday, this calls for forward planning! So, with the boyfriend off on a Lads Day Out, it’s me and the kitchen and a whole heap of treats to cook up. I’ve even got myself a kitchen-hand by way of willing/ambushed housemate at 7am this morning I sprang the idea onto her! Woo… early morning wake up call…

So here is my list of Halloween food that will be made on the Sunday and i’ve included why I’m making each one:

Gluten Free Carrot Whoopie Pies

I couldn’t decide between carrot cake (which i’ve already made so it wouldn’t be a challenge… although sometimes the things you think are easiest are the ones that end up catching you out!) and then I thought ohhh I want Whoopie Pies… because I just changed my twitter picture to me with my plate of Whoopie Pies, but i’ve lost the recipe!! So i’m going to start from scratch and make a new Carrot Cake Whoopie pie with cream cheese frosting for the middle YUM! Oh and I remember I used buttermilk for some unbeknown reason last time, so i’ll definitly do that again as it was quite a good trick to get the consistency right But i’m going to be adding moisture with the carrot, so i’ll be challenged not only in the gluten free area, but also in the density and moist-ness of my pies!!

Pumpkin Scones

This is from the Tenley Molzahn website, so it’s already Gluten Free, my challenge is to make is UK friendly –

a) we don’t have such delights as Pumpkin Scones in our Starbucks,

b) it contains Pumpkin Puree, so without going across London to Whole Foods, i’m going to have to get inventive and

c) mega-challenge will be to NOT eat these on the day as they are for the next day, for Halloween… tricky (or treaty… )

http://www.tenleymolzahn.com/gluten-free-me/

Onion Bhaji

I have a recipe that I have been working on and perfecting for the past couple of years, so i’ll be using that – the challenge will be is to see if I can retain my own standards as sometimes things get too oily, too dry or the onions aren’t sliced right… so we’ll see!

A different Naan Bread from my own recipe

The boyfriend found this in the Shortlist magazine, and I have been studying it in comparison to mine, and this one is on my challenge list because of the ‘two hours’ bit where it has to rest… so it’s going to be a real time one where I have to plan everything out – secretly I love this, it makes me feel all organised and ‘i know what i’m doing really…’!

http://www.shortlist.com/instant-improver/food/how-to-make-naan-bread

Lentil Dal

I’ve had a look at a few, some have something called Tarka with them (e.g. the ‘mostly eating’ one. Or there is the Gino Decampo one with all the trimmings of Crab cakes and onion rings. So I am going to take my research and concoct my own Rubelle’s Moon Dal recipe. This is something I have been told is really too fussy to make/why not just buy it/hard to get right… but come ON i’m doing a CHALLENGE… it has to be challenging, I kind of signed myself up to that one…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/indiancrabcakeonlent_91052

http://www.mostlyeating.com/comforting-butternut-squash-and-red-lentil-dal

And finally, after all that baking, we will be needing rescuing from a kitchen of treats, so I’m going to make a lovely dinner of:

Mexican Lasagne

This is one of my chef challenges. It’s a Nigella Lawson recipe, but the base calls for Tortilla Wraps, which I cannot eat and absolutley refuse to buy the store bought ones – as nice as it is of the supermarkets to attempt to sell these to me, I really am not inspired, so it’s going to be a challenge as I will have to not only make the recipe gluten free, i’m also going to have to make the tortillas from scratch too! Can’t wait!!

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

Kitchen playlist for the day so far goes like this:

‘Everything’ – Michael ‘Bubblewrap’ Buble

Lots of Tilly and The Wall tracks

Same for Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

Clueless Soundtrack

10 Things I Hate About You Soundtrack